Tag Archives | Bay Area

Pacific Brewing Laboratory, better known as Pac Brew Lab, started life as a microbrewery out of San Francisco, where brewers Bryan Hermannsson and Patrick Horn would experiment with new beer flavors, styles, and brewing techniques in their garage/laboratory.

From their start in 2009, when Bryan and Patrick would give away their beer to a handful close friends, they quickly expanded, and are now running bi-monthly, totally free event with hundreds of new friends, along with a sampling of great local street food vendors.

Patrick and Bryan brew small batches that allow them to focus on constant experimentation, and they have been known to create exotic beer styles such as their Hibiscus Saison, Squid Ink Black IPA, Chamomile Ale, Lemongrass IPA, and Szechwan Peppercorn Red ale. Their ongoing offering includes Squid Ink, the India black ale, and Nautilus, the hibiscus saison, and their beers are now available in more than 60 Bay Area locations.

Pac Brew Lab was recently featured in a new video series called Meet the Makers, which gives a closer look at this unique brewing duo and the laboratory they’ve worked to create:

Almanac Beer Company is a new brewery out of San Francisco that takes influences from the Bay Area’s rich food culture and creates fantastic artisanal ales that are barrel-aged and brewed in collaboration with select Northern California sustainable farms.

Their first release, the Summer 2010 Blackberry Ale, is a Belgian-style Golden Ale that’s brewed with four varieties of Sonoma County Blackberries from the Sebastopol Berry Farm, then aged in oak red wine barrels for 11 months.

According to Almanac:

Our golden ale reflects a dueling love of classic Belgian ales and American hops. We balance two row barley, pilsner malt and wheat with a touch of Magnum bittering hops added at the beginning of the boil, and a California-sized addition of Citra hops added at the end of the boil. This late hop addition adds a delicate grapefruit-peel aroma. We then age the beer in used oak wine barrels from California wineries with two hundred pounds of fresh Cherokee Blackberries, and another fifty pounds of Marion, Ollalie and Boysen Berries. All of our berries were hand picked at the family owned and operated Sebastopol Berry Farm.

After eleven months of barrel aging with the fruit, we blended the barrels back together with freshly brewed